Q. A close, though fairly new, friend of mine is an influential art critic. I suppose it is only natural that other friends should now be always asking me for his home address or to bring him along to their exhibition or to the exhibitions of their children. The problem is that they then send invitations which inevitably arrive with a mention of my name and so, even when the work is clearly bad, my friend feels he must attend the shows as a favour to me. I do not want to have all my own favours, as it were, used up on other people. Nor do I want to waste my friend’s time, but without being with him when he opens the invitations I can hardly reverse the endorsements. How can I stem this tide without seeming as though I am blocking people’s careers? And how do I avoid giving out his address when friends ask?
Name and address withheld
A. Critics are well used to receiving suspect endorsements but you should still give your friend carte blanche to ignore those which come in your name unless you have contacted him directly. If people ask for his home address simply tell the truth: it is much better to direct everything to his office as all other mail goes there and their show may otherwise be overlooked when he is marshalling his schedule. Add, ‘I haven’t even made a note of his home address because I know the office is the only place where his mail gets proper attention.’
Q. I am a smoker. Increasingly I have noticed that non-smokers are joining in with standing outside the parties in the street because, as you will know Mary, the most fun people are there. Once or twice I have offered strangers a cigarette, wrongly assuming they were smokers, and they have replied, ‘I don’t normally smoke but I will have one’; or ‘I gave up last week but go on — one won’t do me any harm’. It is no good retracting your offer as they then become quite cross and insistent. When this happens, Mary, what is the polite but firm way of saying, ‘No, I don’t want to be responsible for your starting to smoke’, without spoiling the irresponsible party atmosphere?
M.W., London W8
A. You are right not to want to be an agent of downfall. When this happens just say, ‘Great. I’ll be back in a moment. I’m just going inside to get my portable ashtray. I have left it in there.’ Then allow another cluster of people to block your passage back into the building and start chatting to them instead. The would-be corruptee will soon lose interest. They will also have lost their nicotine urge in a couple of minutes.
Q. A friend who borrowed my flat in London booked alarm calls every day for a week. The bill has just come in. It turns out a single BT alarm call costs £8! I am sure my friend did not know it was so much (she is broke) but I do not want to pay the £56 myself. How should I handle this?
Name and address withheld
A. Thank you for drawing readers’ attention to the enormous cost of a ‘bespoke’ call, i.e. where a human rings you rather than a machine. Say you want to wake up at 7 a.m. The far cheaper way to do this is to enter *55*0700# into the handset. This costs only 35 pence. A robot will announce: ‘This is your reminder call.’ Meanwhile, your friend will have to cough up. Ignorance is no excuse in law.
If you have a problem write to Dear Mary, c/o The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.
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